Music / Ed Harcourt: ‘My Secret Playlist’
We invited one of our favourite musicians, Ed Harcourt, to write about his eight favourite songs right now. He leads off with a Doobie Brothers classic, What A Fool Believes: ‘There’s something about Michael MacDonald’s white beard that’s so warm, so inviting, you feel he has the authority to teach you so much. This song is his calling card. It’s almost like every section is a chorus. I cherish it’.
2. If You Leave Me Now — Chicago: ‘Anything with a French horn is alright by me’.
3. Little Drummer Boy — David Bowie & Bing Crosby: ‘Have you seen the video? It looks like Bing has been forced at gunpoint to sing this with the Thin White Duke. One of the weirdest songs of all time’.
4. My Life — Billy Joel: ‘Lyrically this is pretty nasty stuff (I mean the song is rather whiny), but hey who cares when the melodies are so great! I sang this last year in concert with a full orchestra. Chilling’.
5. Moving Right Along — The Muppets: ‘Only not annoying if you’re four years old. I love it’.
6. If I Could Turn Back the Hands of Time — R.Kelly: ‘Er …’
7. Piece of Me — Britney Spears: ‘The production on this is great. Nice use of vocoder too’.
8. Tip toe through the tulips — Tiny Tim: ‘Very scary and otherworldly. Beautiful use of the uke’.
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We have a bunch of new playlists up on our sister site, My Secret Playlist, a music discovery website and weekly email publication in which we invite our favourite bands and musicians to give us the rundown on their eight favourite songs right now. Over the past few weeks, acts such as The B52s, Team Genius, Pivot, Jukebox the Ghost, Moby, Katy Perry, and the Dandy Warhols, among many others, have written about the music that inspires them. To sign-up to receive the weekly My Secret Playlist publication, just enter your email address into the website’s subscription box.
The B-52s: ‘My Secret Playlist’
Our favourite retro-hipsters — and the only band to make Hawaiian shirts look at least kinda fashionable — The B52s have been doing it for more than thirty years, and they’re still writing great pop music. Their latest album, Funplex, is just that: fun plex twenty. Sorry, plus twenty. We like it. And we’re not surprised given the rather old-school Secret Playlist that Kate Pierson [first six songs] and Keith Strickland have assembled. Read more
Brett Dennen: ‘My Secret Playlist’
We love the music of Oakdale, California singer-songwriter Brett Dennen, who has one of the finest voices in contemporary pop-folk. He’s touring Australia in September with shows in Brisbane (9th), Sydney (16th) and Melbourne (17th), in support of his beautiful new album, So Much More. With that in mind, we checked in with him to get his Secret Playlist — a rundown on what music he’s listening to right now: This Time Tomorrow by The Kinks. ‘I like this song because it inspires me to wonder what the future may bring. We never know who we will become. All we have is hope and dreams. It also makes me nostalgic for the past. It makes me feel sentimental’. Read more
Also by ZOLTON
UNKLE’s new album, End Stories … Music For Film, comes in a limited edition gatefold vinyl gloss with sculptured panel embossing. We have three copies to give away to randomly selected Australian Lost At E Minor subscribers who leave a comment under this post.
New Zealand-born, New York-based artist and designer BEMODERN has updated his site with some work showcasing his new interest in the vernacular of digital distortion, creating pixelated static motion with a cut up montage from Google earth’s crude renderings. There is also a selection of new commercial work with motion boards for various broadcast and advertising clients. Read more
Fernanda Cohen’s New York portfolio class
The brilliant New York illustrator, Fernanda Cohen — who just happens to live down the road from me in Brooklyn — is teaching a portfolio class at Third Ward starting this coming Tuesday. The course, Illustration Portfolio, ‘helps students build a professional portfolio strong enough for them to feel confident to show it to art directors in the illustration field, including editorial and advertising’. She will lead the class in discussions about ‘what goes into a portfolio, and how to choose your best work, and talk about art directors, who they are, and what they expect from illustrators they are looking to hire’. Visit the Third Ward website for more details.
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We interviewed Marc Collin, the creative force behind French group Nouvelle Vague, who along with a series of 80s acoustic tribute albums also released an installment in the popular Late Night Tales compilation series. Read more
Fate is the record, Dr. Dog were destined to make a timeless yet contemporary distillation of the band’s open-armed, big-hearted sound. Inventive, magnificently realized, and absolutely irresistible, the Park The Van Records release sees the Philadelphia-based quintet filtering the gamut of American popular music into its own idiosyncratic brand of blue-eyed, dilated-pupil soul. As ever, Dr. Dog makes magic from an enduring pop palette of intricate harmonies, shape-shifting melodies, and ramshackle audio ingenuity all presented through their slightly skewed and utterly individualistic outlook.
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We have a bunch of new playlists up on our sister site, My Secret Playlist, a music discovery website and weekly email publication in which we invite our favourite bands and musicians to give us the rundown on their eight favourite songs right now. Over the past few weeks, acts such as The B52s, Team Genius, Pivot, Jukebox the Ghost, Moby, Katy Perry, and the Dandy Warhols, among many others, have written about the music that inspires them. To sign-up to receive the weekly My Secret Playlist publication, just enter your email address into the website’s subscription box.
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I love the sense of intimacy about the work of Chicago-based photographer, Brian Ulrich. His retail project Copia ‘is a long-term photographic examination of the peculiarities and complexities of the consumer-dominated culture in which we live’. We interviewed him recently and asked him what camera he uses once he gets inside a store he’s photographing: ‘For many of the pictures in the Retail project I used a medium format SLR with a waist level viewfinder. Having a finder that you can look down into instead of holding it to your eye calls a lot attention to yourself as well as allows one to hold the camera still at much slower shutter speeds. Regardless of those things though, the majority of the time it takes a combination of patience and boldness. Strangely I don’t run into people having much of an issue with it. Most often I really don’t think people notice. If an employee does ask me not to take pictures I simply laugh and move on, I’m well aware that what I’m doing looks odd. Better to own up and walk across the street to the Kmart’. Read more
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Located on a mountain in country outside Mudgee, in New South Wales, Australia, a permanent camp designed by Casey Brown has been set. A timber structure clad in copper has been designed to have a closed state and an open state. From the closed position, the flanks of copper are hoisted and capture views across the valley. With an imagery of structures, materials and mechanics of old, there is something romantic about this foothold on the hill.
Dalton Trumbo was the first blacklisted writer to win an Academy Award. However, he could not claim the award until years later because he had been forced to write under a pseudonym. Trumbo was one of the Hollywood Ten and even spent a year in jail as a result of investigations into Communist influences in the motion picture industry. This documentary is fascinating not just for its examination of a bizarre period in American history where fear replaced reason and innocent men were jailed, but also for how Trumbo dealt with these hardships. Read more
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UNKLE’s new album, End Stories … Music For Film, comes in a limited edition gatefold vinyl gloss with sculptured panel embossing. We have three copies to give away to randomly selected Australian Lost At E Minor subscribers who leave a comment under this post.
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